Sophos Assigned Patent

Sophos Limited, Abingdon, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (9,621,524) developed by Brenner, Stephan, Munich, Germany, for a “cloud-based key management.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Cloud storage of sensitive data is improved by ensuring that all cloud-based data is encrypted at all times, not only when the data is at rest, (i.e., stored), but also while data is being processed or communicated. Cryptographic keys can advantageously be managed via cloud based resources without exposing sensitive data. Instead, a key management system maintains cryptographic functions on administrative hosts and endpoints outside of cloud-based resources so that any vulnerabilities of the cloud-based resources will expose only encrypted data, and keys and sensitive data will never be exposed in unencrypted form. Thus sensitive data is protected end-to-end among hosts and endpoints using, e.g., platform independent cryptographic functions and libraries within a web browser or the like, and the cloud functions simply as a storing and forwarding medium for secure data.“

The patent application was filed on December 16, 2013 (14/107,752).